Friday, October 19, 2012

[BONUS] 404. Pumpkin Anatomy II: If I Only Had A Brain

Posted by
Noah

A few years ago I discovered that with careful dissection you could discover the secret anatomy of a Jack-O-Lantern. This year I decided to try another experiment and low-and-behold it turns out that if you cut it just right you can reveal the hidden brain of a pumpkin!...

I thought it would be fun to give you a step-by-step guide if you wanted to give this a try yourself...

1. Get two pumpkins, one orange that's larger and one white that's
smaller. You'll have to guess how much smaller the 2nd one needs to be,
but figure the walls of the larger will probably be 1-2 inches thick.
The bonus is you can always carve away more if you need to adjust the
fit.

2. Mark off a line about 1/3 of the way down on the larger pumpkin to
allow for a large enough opening to insert the 2nd pumpkin. Then draw
your design on each pumpkin. The orange one can be a fairly traditional
Jack-O-Lantern, I just made mine a skull since it's my thing. For the
brain I printed off reference images from the internet so that I could
it make it look more realistic. It only needs to cover the 1st 1/3 of
pumpkin, since the rest will be hidden. NOTE: use a marking tool that
can easily wiped off (china marker works well). I made the mistake of
using a metallic sharpie that only came off with the use of nail polish
remover!

3. Carve & gut the 1st pumpkin like you normally would. Be sure to keep the top since it makes a nice display element later.

4. For the brain pumpkin carve the lines first, by incising them with V-shaped cuts that only go about 1/4 of an inch deep.

5. Cut off the bottom of the brain pumpkin and gut it from below. Then
cut out a shape that will allow the design of your larger pumpkin to be
uncovered and allow candle light to come through! You will end up with a
sort of helmet shape. Sadly it didn't fit on anyone's head when I made
it, but it would be an amazing kid's costume if you've got a willing
volunteer! The trickiest part is adjusting this to fit inside the 2nd,
so you may have to carve away at both the inside of the orange pumpkin
and the outside of the white to get it to sit properly.

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